other social experiments in Russia

The Bolshevik party took control of Russia in 1917. They didn't control the whole of Russia to begin with although they controlled the two big cities, Petrograd and Moscow. It took them a while to take control of the whole of Russia, this was the civil war, and in the meantime there were other governments.

The Bolsheviks would have accepted the democratically elected parliament - the Constituent Assembly - if they had had a majority. They didn't though and so Lenin had it closed. Some of the elected members of the Constituent Assembly fled for their lives, such as the family of the American author Nabokov.

Others went to a city called Samara where for a time they had their own state, dominated by the Socialist Revolutionary Party. This was a non-Marxist socialist party popular among the peasants because they believed in redistribution of land from landlords to peasants. Having said that though, the Samara government (Komuch) didn't enact land redistribution, at least not from land owners to peasants.

Other SRs decided to back Lenin because he said he believed in land reform. The Samara government despite their democratic legitimacy didn't last long. Military defeats and political intrigues brought about their end.

The Bolsheviks could always claim that soviet democracy was better than parliamentary democracy anyway. Soviets were to begin with councils elected by workers, soldiers and peasants. That fitted Marxist ideology. It seems that soviets were genuinely democratic to begin with but then Lenin and Trotsky managed to dominate them, giving the Bolsheviks a spurious semi-legitimacy.

Another Marxist party was the Menshevik Party. The original Marxist party split into two, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Mensheviks managed to get control of Georgia and their government lasted a couple of years before the Red Army defeated them. Unlike the Komuch, the Mensheviks in Georgia really did redistribute land to the peasants.

Alexander Antonov was a Socialist Revolutionary who controlled large areas of Russia centred on the town of Tambov. His army was called the Blue Army, unlike other anti-Bolsheviks who were called Greens.

The other interesting social experiment was the Anarchist region in the Ukraine. Nestor Makhno was the leading figure in this region. Towards the end of the civil war his army backed the Bolsheviks and became absorbed into the Red Army. Makhno managed to flee Russia otherwise he would probably been murdered by Lenin's secret police, the dreaded Cheka.

Maria Nikiforova, was another Anarchist. Her group was called the Black Guards. Anarchists were Black, Bolsheviks were Red, anti-Bolsheviks Green and reactionary armies were Whites.

In George Orwell's book Animal Farm we get a totally wrong impression of the course of the Russian Revolution. The character of 'Old Major' represents either Marx or Lenin. Marx was long dead by the time of the February 1917 revolution. Lenin had nothing to do with it. Lenin launched his coup d'état later that year.

Most Russians supported the Socialist Revolutionaries, or at least most of the peasants did, who were the biggest group. The SRs were not Marxist. Some of them were foolish enough to support Lenin. Russian industrial workers and soldiers/sailors were as likely to support the Mensheviks (who were Marxists) or the Anarchists. The SRs supported the elected Constituent Assembly and formed their own government, quite legitimately.

The idea that the Bolsheviks were the one and only alternative to the Tsar, that they were the revolution, is wrong. It can only help the Communist cause. Animal Farm seems to be teaching us that Marx, Lenin and Trotsky were the good guys and it all got betrayed by Stalin. The reality is that the revolution was betrayed by Lenin and Trotsky in 1917.